Students Present Research on Intimate Partner Violence

Webster undergraduate students Michelle Bloyd-Fink and Emily Mason presented original
research at the 31st Annual Qualitative Analysis Conference in London, Ontario on
June 25, 2014.

The conference’s theme for 2014 was “The Social Construction of Boundaries: Creating,
Maintaining, Transcending, and Reconstituting Boundaries.” Alongside fellow scholars
from around the world, Bloyd-Fink and Mason presented “Thought Pattern Changes in
Participants of a Batterer’s Intervention Program” and shared their findings on the
reconstruction of physical and emotional boundaries over time among men who batter,
using data from their ongoing longitudinal study on thought patterns among Batterer’s
Intervention Program (BIP) participants in St. Louis.

Bloyd-Fink, a double major in Sociology and Women and Gender Studies, and Mason, a
double major in Psychology and Women and Gender Studies, began their research on intimate
partner violence in January 2014, collecting data from male volunteers enrolled in
the BIP program at RAVEN – a non-profit organization in St. Louis dedicated to domestic
violence intervention and prevention services.

Men in the 48 credited week program meet regularly with facilitators and fellow program
participants for an education in non-violence. 95 percent of them are attending on
a court mandate.

“Half the time they’re there, they’re challenging each other and the facilitators
are challenging them on their belief systems and their behaviors, and then the other
half [of the program] is spent on curriculum that explores issues like anger management,
gender and oppression, and sexual violence,” Bloyd-Fink explained.

Using the BIP curriculum as a guide, Bloyd-Fink and Mason crafted guided journal prompts
to collect anonymous qualitative data on the thought patterns of the participants
through the participants’ own writing.

“Each journal page,” Mason said, “begins with a question about what emotions they’re
feeling – which is something the men are asked at the beginning of each group meeting
anyway – and then [a question that asks] ‘how have you been abusive, verbally violent,
or physically violent in the past week?’. Then the last question is one we’ve come
up with, and it rotates.”

The men fill out their journal responses each week for the duration of the program,
and answer the same question again at several points in time.

“Because it’s a longitudinal study, with data collected at multiple points in time
over a long period of time, we can have a basis for comparison, for change over time,”
Mason said.

RAVEN agreed to incentivize participation in the study by offering volunteers a credit
toward program completion for their work. Currently, the study has 25 volunteers,
but Bloyd-Fink and Mason expect to reach a sample size of 75 to 100 men.

The duration of the study, the frequency with which data is collected, and the research
sample size set Bloyd-Fink and Mason’s findings apart from much of the current research
on Batterer Intervention Programs. Mason found that, when reviewing literature on
BIP efficacy for an independent study course, most studies use sample sizes of six
to 12 participants and collected data at a single point in time.

Additionally, most research on domestic violence is quantitative, meaning it provides
objective data like numbers and percentages. Bloyd-Fink and Mason’s research – like
all the research presented at the conference in Ontario this summer – is qualitative,
meaning it provides more subjective data and addresses complexity not adequately communicated
in numbers alone.

“Quantitative research [in this area] is highly coveted – data on repeat offenses,
for example – but domestic violence is so much more complex than you can make into
a number,” Bloyd-Fink explained. “If you’re just quantifying someone hitting [another
person], you’re missing out on information on who hit first, on how hard someone was
hit, on the injury experience, on how people experience hitting differently based
on their position in society.”

Though they will continue to collect research well into 2015, Bloyd-Fink and Mason
were able to present at the conference an analysis of their findings thus far as they
relate to issues of boundaries among men who batter.

“We are finding that RAVEN is providing language to the [study] participants to help
them discuss uncomfortable boundaries, as in the case of sexual violence,” Bloyd-Fink
said, “and this aids in the negotiation process. [The men] are currently struggling
with their emotions as well, often setting up strict emotional boundaries [for themselves].”

When they have completed their study, Bloyd-Fink and Mason will examine how these
boundaries – and other facets of thinking –change over the duration of the program
among men who batter.

Their overall aim, Mason said, is “getting some kind of picture of what’s happening
in these programs. If the goal [in working with perpetrators of intimate partner violence]
is evidence-based practice, then you need a baseline.”

Both women recognize how their work with RAVEN and this h project have made an impact on their lives within the academic realm and beyond.

“Ultimately, I want to get my PhD in sociology, and this project will always be something
that defines how I work, how I grow, how I learn in the future,” Bloyd-Fink said.

Through their research, Mason said she and Bloyd-Fink “learned how to communicate,
how to work together. It has become something that we can take ownership of, and it
has given us a lot more confidence.”

The women expressed hope that their study, once complete, will help illuminate the
complexity of domestic violence issues through the often-overlooked vantage point
of the perpetrators.

Bloyd-Fink noted that sociological research often focuses on the underprivileged –
those who have been victimized – but “researching the men who have the privilege of
being male and are using it…there’s a lot to learn from that instead of just researching
the people who are experiencing violence. We often research a problem from [the victim’s]
perspective without understanding the dominant group in power. We should be looking
at [those in power] too.”

Understanding more about the beliefs and ideas that precipitate violence, they explained,
helps work toward sustainable violence prevention methods.

“This is not just something I’m doing to get an ‘A’,” Mason added. “This is something
I’m doing to contribute to the field.”